The Sightings Map: Every Can, Every Store, Everywhere

The map in BeastVault is one of those features that doesn't fully land until you zoom into your own city and start tapping pins. Every Monster can sighting ever logged by any user is on there. Every single one.

What you see when you tap a pin

Each pin represents one sighting. Tap it and you get the full record: which variant it was, which store it was spotted at, the price if the person logged it, and when. If there's been activity on the sighting, like "No longer there" votes, that shows up too.

It's useful in a few directions. You can find stores near you that have stocked specific variants. You can see whether a rare regional or import has turned up somewhere in your area. You can track down a specific can you've been hunting by zooming out and looking for pins associated with it. The map makes geographic patterns visible that would be completely invisible otherwise.

How it stays accurate

BeastVault keeps the map accurate through community voting. If you visit a store and the can that was logged there is gone, you tap "No longer there" on the sighting. Once enough people vote that way, the pin is flagged as stale. It doesn't disappear, but it's visually marked so other users know the sighting may be out of date.

This works because the same people who care about the map are the ones visiting the stores. The incentive to report stale sightings is built into the activity of being a collector. You're there, you checked, you can tell the community in one tap.

The design

The map uses a custom dark style built specifically for BeastVault, not a generic maps embed reskinned with some colors. This matters more than it sounds. A map you're staring at to find cans needs to be readable, and a purpose-built dark style for this kind of dense pin data reads better than a default map theme.

How sightings get added

Every time a user logs a sighting, the pin goes live on the map in real time. A heavily-used app in a city will show you a rich, current picture of what's in stock where. A newer city or region will have sparser coverage, but coverage grows as more users log from there.

The map is a collective project even if no one thinks of it that way. Every log you submit is a contribution to something other collectors are actively using.